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How to build a healthy relationship between engineering and product

Struggling to work productively with your product partner? Here are four ways to build great rapport.

By Danielle Leong

September 26, 2022

If you’re struggling to work productively with your product partner, here are four ways to build great rapport.

As an engineering leader, most people are surprised to hear that I love product managers (PMs). Most of my friends are PMs. I even married a PM! (Our wedding was a very well-organized three-day affair with a kanban board and weekly standups.)

I love working with PMs because the partnership between engineering and product leaders can be very powerful, when done right. A healthy product and engineering partnership is a thing of beauty. Your team has clear priorities. The backlog is nicely prioritized but still flexible enough to handle adjustments.

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About the author

  • Danielle Leong
    Danielle Leong

    Danielle is an engineering leader passionate about creating healthy, inclusive, productive engineering teams and helping them do their best work. She is currently the Director of Engineering for IAM at GitHub.

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